Once in a while, audiences get to see a rare treasure like Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, a movie that really takes the term "family film" to heart. Instead of serving as a 90-minute babysitter for the little ones, this movie includes Mom and Dad in on the action. It's truly a little shop of wonders with something to entertain any member of the extended clan.

The titular establishment here is a modestly-sized toy store run by the eccentric, 243-year-old man-child Mr. Edward Magorium (Dustin Hoffman). Though his shop may be small, Mr. Magorium (a self-described "toy impresario, wonder aficionado, and avid shoe-wearer") boasts an imagination that knows no bounds, and everything taking place within the Wonder Emporium seems to defy at least a dozen laws of physics.

Not as much at ease with herself is Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), the store's spunky manager, who's grown a bit insecure thinking about what to do with her life after she must inevitably say goodbye to the Emporium. Sheer chaos results when  Mr. Magorium announces his plans to leave and give the store to Molly. The once-vibrant Emporium literally loses its color and ceases to be magical. With the store's future  in Molly's hands, she's forced into deciding between taking her chances in the land of the working class or  finding the courage to carry on Mr. Magorium's legacy of fun.

Cynics might see a family comedy focused on the hijinks in a toy store as the basis for a shameless, "consumerism is good" message. But thankfully, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium comes across more like a springboard into exploring themes deeper than those usually found in a G-rated movie. Amid the sentient bouncy balls and gravity-defying paper airplanes lies a message about looking at life with eyes wide open, about never losing one's sense of fun and wonder even in the face of that most unavoidable of fates: death. It comes as no surprise that such heavy issues are touched upon here, for writer/director Zach Helm wrote the equally philosophical Stranger than Fiction. Mr. Magorium worked for me because of Helm's sure hand at relaying these themes while keeping his younger audience members in mind, applying just the right touches of deeply-seeded dramatics and quirky humor. 

Hoffman plays a character with a speech impediment, one who's sort of a cross between Pee-Wee Herman and Willy Wonka. His Mr. Magorium is the  viewer's  tour guide to the magical insanity within his shop. Although it's not a particularly memorable performance, Hoffman does a solid job of serving as the mouthpiece to the screenplay's more introspective side. There are a few moments when the lovely Portman makes it a bit too obvious she's in on the act, winking at the viewer instead of going along with the story's cumulative whimsy with a straight face. Still, she isn't bad in her role as a young woman at a crossroads in her life. The film's most stand-out performances belong to Zach Mills, a nine-year-old who serves as a narrator of sorts, and Jason Bateman, playing a humorless accountant hired to assess the Emporium's worth. Bateman does a good job putting his character, a basic Ebenezer Scrooge type, through a convincing transformation. 

If you haven't lost your childlike sense of wonder, and if the thought of a movie whose main character questions the usefulness of the number four while wearing a name tag saying "Not Steve" gives you the giggles, then a visit to Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium is definitely in order.

MY RATING: *** (out of ****)

(Released by Fox Walden Pictures and rated "G" as suitable for all audiences.)